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Published: October 6th 2008
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Train to Xiamen
Millions of people travel during National Day break. National Day break! What a trip!
Our 14 hour train from ride Guangzhou to Xiamen (Fujian) was a blast. The train was packed, and we were all separated because we got our tickets so late. I had to have two women move out of my sweet window seat, and made instant friends with the guy next to me who was a librarian at a science and technology library in Guangzhou. He was a Hakka and told me all about the tulous we were about to go see in Fujian. He got off around midnight, and other random Chinese people squeezed into his chair instantly. I slept and read most of the time until the crowds thinned out so I could go see everyone, who had all made their own friends. Multiple card games and antics pursued, and we had a great time until about three o’clock in the morning when the train was empty enough for us to finally lie down and get some sleep. I woke to green mountains, banana trees, stone village roofs, and bamboo shoots rolling by the train window at dawn, and managed to take some sweet video of my sleeping donkey friends.
Cody made
Won't you be my neighbor?
Dude was mad cool-- he was a Hakka and told me all about the tulous. some friends on the train who took it upon themselves to find us a hotel for the night in Xiamen. Their names were Judy (who spoke wonderful English!), Yeah Yeah (it’s actually Yeh Yuan or something, but I’m not sure and Yeah Yeah is a sweet character in the Sandlot, so we’ll stick with that), and Meng something. Sweetest women ever! Judy works in Shenzhen, Yeah Yeah in Guangzhou, and Meng was from Xiamen. After they found us a hotel, we all met up later for dinner and a quick tour of the downtown Xiamen shopping district. In the meantime, we were able to nap, shower, buy train tickets back to Guangzhou, and make it to the Nanputuo Temple.
Nanputuo is a Buddhist temple that draws visitors from across China. Its sprawling layout leads the devout and the tourist alike through courtyards filled with the scent of incense and flowers to trails meandering up the side of a mountain. The hike thins out the crowd and you can wander peacefully and look down on the temple’s roof tops. The architecture is amazing and the buildings are all incredibly beautiful. Despite the National Day break crowds, the temple and trails
Nanputuo Temple
This temple was first built over 1000 years ago but has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. The hike up to the top was marvelously serene. provided a breath of fresh air and serene quiet that I haven’t felt since I entered the freneticness of China. I could have spent all day on the quiet rock outcroppings overlooking the temple, but our Chinese friends were calling.
We met the girls at an amazing seafood restaurant for dinner. The food was so fresh and delicious! Afterwards, half of our group went straight to a bar while the rest of us explored an area of Xiamen that was quite similar to Dongmen in Shenzhen. Lots of street food, fake bags and cheap toys, balloons, and randomly expensive Department stores lined the streets and ally ways. We looked across the water to the lights of the island of Gulangyu, our destination for the next day, and made plans to meet our Chinese friends there for some more exploring. The girls then put us in a cab to meet our other donkey friends (the bar is temporarily open.)
By the time we found Liz, Dan, Kofi, and Cody, they had already made new friends and had a plan for the rest of the evening. They had wandered into a restaurant for desert and had been surrounded by a
crowd of severely intoxicated Chinese men. The owner of the restaurant took care of all the drinks and inquired as to why they came in and what would encourage more foreigners to do the same. By the time Kiki, Fred, Stephen and I arrived, everyone was ready for the bars and more adventure so we had to catch up quickly. We found a corner store and our usual 4 kuai giant beers and were hanging out until Freeway, one of the guys everyone was hanging out with at the restaurant, arrived with two cars to bring us all to a club. On the ride over, we renamed him Hemmingway because of the sound of his Chinese name, and he was excited about it all night long.
The club was hysterical—we were the only ones dancing with lots of Chinese spectators, ensuring that the rest of our drinks were bought for us as well. I’m still not sure if it was the bartenders or Hemmingway and friends that hooked us up, but either way it was a lot of fun. A late night McDonalds run ensued, and we made it safe and sound back to our hotel. As we were
about to go to sleep, we received a phone call from someone offering to send us up a “young woman to give us a massage.” Not knowing what kind of happy ending was being promised, we said bu yao and went to sleep.
The next day we met the girls at the ferry to Gulangyu. The island used to house western consulates and important people, so it’s filled with Western architecture and post-Opium war history. The island has the highest number of pianos per capita of anywhere in the world, winning it the name of Piano Island. It’s also called Drum Island because of the sound the waves used to make on the rocks and caves earlier this century. Being strictly pedestrian, the island was quiet and peaceful despite the numbers of people. It was a perfect day—gorgeous weather, some beach time, and new Asian friends on the beach. I made a friend named Lavi who taught me Chinese and I taught her English while everyone else slept. She’s a university teacher who was in Xiamen for vacation. Hopefully we’ll keep in touch. The dinner that night left something to be desired—local food included a clam omelet thing, fish
ball soup, a jelly-fish-like gelatin mass with random meat bits, and greasy noodles. We tried to be polite but I don’t think anyone could force down more than a slice of the gelatinous mess.
That night, the girls took us to a secluded beach on the Xiamen side of the bay. There was a performance of traditional Chinese opera going on right beside us, and despite the intense nasal sound of the singing it was visually spectacular. We played mafia on the beach and watched locals light red lanterns that filled with hot air and drifted over the water and up into the sky. The tradition represents sending their hopes and wishes up towards heaven and the ancestors, and was inspired by a Chinese historical figure who helped an emperor conquer large parts of China. I don’t have the whole story but it was beautiful to watch. Sometimes the lanterns would catch fire and fall back to earth, but the Chinese, ever the optimists, just sent more up one after another.
The next day we visited Xiamen University, which has a gorgeous campus that one of my Chinese English teachers at my school attended, and then attempted to
Our Chinese friends!
Judy, Meng, and Yeah Yeah find a hot spring resort for foot massages and relaxation. It ended up being about an hour away and pretty expensive, so Kiki, Liz, Cody and I settled for foot massages at a hotel downtown. It was the most painful experience of my life, but was more expensive than the fantastic massage I had in Zhuhai. As I was beginning to catch a cold, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel. The other boys stayed out and found one of Xiamen’s bar streets, making our night hellish around two when they came back and wanted to hang out. Our next adventure began the next day as we made our way to Hukeng and Yongding county to see the Hakka tulous.
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